Hundreds of visitors over the four-day event featuring pitches from 50 startups and insights into the Italian innovation ecosystem. And a sold-out Italian Pavilion for the Investor Night that captured the attention of more than 300 guests. The Italian delegation at CES in Las Vegas, the world’s most important tech event, enjoyed great success in terms of audience, ideas, and energy. Organized by ITA (Italian Trade Agency) the country’s participation in the American event thus met its goal of providing the world’s most cutting-edge audience with “a taste of Italian innovation”.
“At CES in Las Vegas, Italy presented a truly integrated ecosystem consisting of successful, future-oriented companies, research centers, universities, administrations, and local authorities,” said Alessandra Rainaldi, Trade Commissioner at ITA – Los Angeles Office. “We brought 50 startups engaged in all major areas of the innovation market to the tech world’s most important showcase. All this is part of the broad support that ITA provides companies to help them enter markets all across the globe. The success of this experience further strengthens the value of the entire network of initiatives.”
Italy’s participation at CES got off to the best possible start, with Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the organizer of CES, attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony along with Los Angeles Consul General Silvia Chiave and Antonino Laspina, Trade Commissioner of ITA’s New York office and executive director for the United States.
Then, over the course of the four-day event, numerous “Innovation Talks” were held in the arena in the center of the pavilion, touching on various topics of the Italian and European ecosystem and opportunities offered by the US market. Representatives from the government of California, along with Consul Chiave and Alessandra Rainaldi, explained the state’s opportunities for startup growth, while Jean-David Malo, president of the European Innovation Council (EIC), spoke about European programs such as Horizon Europe. The microphones were then passed on to Prospera Women – an organization in Silicon Valley that brings together programs to support female-led startups around the world – for a discussion on the topic of Diversity & Inclusion, more central than ever to this year’s CES.
The focus of the concluding panel of the first day was the mobility of the future, with presentations by Dario Peirone, president of the Foreign Center for International Expansion of the Piedmont Region (Ceipiemonte), the cradle of the Italian automotive industry, and Benedetto Carambia, head of R&D and Innovation at Movyon, the smart mobility company of the Autostrade per l’Italia group. They were joined by Paolo Taticchi, professor of Strategy & Sustainability at the UCL School of Management in London, Vincent Mauroit, director of Tech Transfer at NOI Techpark; and Sergio Savaresi, professor at Politecnico di Milano and team leader of the PoliMOVE project, fresh off several successes in the Indy Autonomous Challenge, including victory in the Las Vegas race that took place during CES.
On the second day, in addition to the startups that enlivened the arena with their pitches, first on stage were Ceipiemonte with its president Peirone, the regional councilor for international expansion Fabrizio Ricca, and Italdesign CEO Antonio Casu. Then it was the turn of “The New Italian Manufacturing” with Professor Carlo Bagnoli, professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and director of the VeniSIA accelerator, who spoke with three representatives of Italian manufacturing innovation: Barbara Sala, CEO of the innovative SME Delcon, a Bergamo-based biomedical company that partnered with the New York Blood Center to develop the Compasso D’oro design award-winning blood scale named Milano; Enrico Zobele, president of Everel Group, a components company that has opened an Open Innovation center; and Mario Cammarota, R&D manager of Unox.
In the late afternoon of the second day there was then the event with the largest audience participation: the Italian Investor Night welcomed more than 300 people to the Italian pavilion, including innovators and international investors, who enjoyed a fruitful networking opportunity with a “Spritz&Pitch.”
The day of January 7 was dedicated to local innovative ecosystems, featuring the Innovation Talk of the Area Science Park national research organization, a partner of the Italian initiative at CES, and the regional delegations of Sardinia and Marche, which hosted panels dedicated to the innovative ecosystems of these two regions most structurally represented within the pavilion, and then with pitches from the respective startups present at Las Vegas.
